Hackerne.ws appears to be the new official HN domain!

Any technically inclined person can point any domain whose DNS they control at any IP (or cname it, which is pointer indirection for DNS). Many servers will not be happy with you if you try that, and will refuse to process the request if the HTTP host header is not in an enumerated list. HN simply ignores the host in he HTTP header, allowing any HTTP request which reaches it to resolve normally.

(For that matter, you could hosts file google.com to that IP and it would work, too.)

Background:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84039

No. This is not the new HN domain.

looks like they are the same IP, so... appears to be legit:

jm3% dig news.ycombinator.com | grep IN news.ycombinator.com. 424 IN A 174.132.225.106

jm3% dig hackerne.ws | grep IN hackerne.ws. 932 IN A 174.132.225.106